Black Gate

It’s been a few months since I’ve done one of these. Partly that’s for personal reasons that I won’t go into here, and partly it’s because I haven’t received a lot of submissions lately, so I went looking for a book to review, and I ended up with one that proved a little longer than I anticipated. (If you’d like to submit a book for me to review, please see the instructions.)

This month’s self-published book review is of Dawn of Wonder, by Jonathan Renshaw, a 700-page novel of epic fantasy. Mr. Renshaw doesn’t need my help selling his book, as he’s sold over 200,000 copies, has over 2,500 Amazon reviews, and has won a bevy of awards. But it is a self-published book, and I was curious whether it could live up to the expectations.

It is certainly a well-written book, with rich and poetic language and strong characterization. Aedan, the main character, is instantly likeable, adventurous and bold but with a grave weakness that will haunt him throughout the novel. We’re first introduced to Aedan as a boy, together with his friends, most notably Kalry, the daughter of the local noble. When tragedy strikes and Kalry is lost to slavers, Aedan is blamed, and his family has to leave the area. It is here that we are introduced to the source of Aedan’s fears and weakness, his father’s abusive temper. When they arrive in the city of Castath, Aedan’s father separates from his family to return to the criminal lifestyle he had practiced before marrying.

Aedan quickly decides that what he wants is to become a soldier, independent of his father and the domineering woman his mother finds shelter with, and more importantly, able to pursue revenge on the nation of slavers who took Kalry. When he seeks out the training to become one, he quickly catches the eye of General Osric, and is offered a place at the Academy, studying to become a gray marshal, the spies and scouts who are Castath’s first line of defense. Believing that becoming one would give him an even better chance to avenge Kalry, he leaps at the opportunity.

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I’ve received very few submissions recently, and I’d like to get more.

Disclosure: Mike Duran edited a story of mine for Coach’s Midnight Diner once. I’m also Facebook friends with him, and got to know him a little in person at a con last year. I think I can still be objective in reviewing his novel.

Saint Death is the second in Mike Duran’s paranormal noir Reagan Moon series. I’ve read a number of his stories before, from the religious supernatural fiction of The Resurrection and The Telling, to the more bizarre stories like Winterland. But his self-published Reagan Moon novels are where Mike seems to have hit his stride. Or perhaps, they’re more along the lines of the type of fiction I like to read.

Paranormal reporter (or paparazzi, as some people call him) Reagan Moon has been hunting ghosts all his career, but he never really believed in them until he had an undeniable experience with the supernatural in The Ghost Box. At the climax of that adventure, Reagan was struck by lightning, and the odd, perhaps supernatural, cross-like Tau that he wore was fused with his chest, preserving its shape in a Lichtenberg figure. The lightning also gave him what he calls stormgifts, such as a strange intuition, a limited ability to heal others, and most weirdly, the ability to teleport—except the teleporting is more like moving between worlds, and punching a hole through anything standing in the way in this one. But using the stormgifts is hard, requiring an effort of focus and will that are difficult for Reagan to summon, and each time he uses them, the Tau scar seems to grow.

Reagan’s troubles take on a supernatural aspect again when a tip from his patron, and fellow gifted, Klammer, sends him to an LA ranch to look for someone called the Shroud. There he finds a Santa Muerte shrine, a wannabe vampire, and a cult priestess named Etherea, threatening to summon the archangel of death for another go at the Tenth Plague of Egypt, the killing of the firstborn. Fortunately, Reagan is assisted by his guardian angel Bernard, his shapeshifting almost-girlfriend Kanya, and the members of the Imperia, an eclectic collection of fellow gifted, whose abilities are consuming their bodies just as Reagan’s is.

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I’ve received very few submissions recently, and I’d like to get more.

Forgotten Soldiers is the story of Tyrus, a sergeant in the Turine army. Turine has been at war with the Geneshan Empire for over a decade, and the war is almost over, the Empire on the defensive. Tyrus’s tactical skill and magic resistance make him a highly valued asset, and he is sent, along with his well-trained unit and powerful mage sister, on the critical mission of recovering a magical artifact, an ancient superweapon in the hands of the Geneshans. He succeeds, and the Geneshans immediately surrender. It turns out the Geneshans are even more afraid of the artifact than the Turines are, and the only condition of their surrender is that the Turines not use the artifact. Tyrus and what remains of his unit are discharged.

Their reception is not quite as warm as they anticipated. Many people have heard rumors of what the army has been up to, and it’s not pretty. People regard the soldiers with suspicion, refuse to do business with them, and there is even an attack by a mob at the first town they visit. When Tyrus and his friends are forced to defend themselves, the situation becomes worse and they have to leave town in a hurry, every soldier hoping that they’ll at least be welcomed back in their hometowns.

For Tyrus and his friends, that’s not to be. Tyrus returns to find himself presumed dead, and his family in dire straits. The town has changed, consisting mostly of newcomers hostile to him, and even his old friends are either suspicious of him themselves or too afraid of the current climate to help. It’s up to him to rescue his son and daughter, Zadok and Myra, from indentured servitude and try to find a place for his family.

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I’ve received very few submissions recently, and I’d like to get more.

This month, we look at The Chained Adept by Karen Myers.

Penrys has worked at the Collegium—a college of wizards—for the past three years, but she’s not from there. No one knows where she’s from. She has enough magical knowledge and power to frighten the wizards of the Collegium, but she has no memories prior to being found lying naked in the snow and no clues as to her origins aside from the chain she wears around her neck and her furred ears, neither of which anyone has seen before. The Collegium gave her the title of adept and access to their library, but her research taught her less about herself than about the use and creation of magical devices. When one of those devices flings her halfway around the world, she only discovers more questions.

Penrys finds herself in an army camp under magical attack. After helping to defeat the attack, she is put under the watchful care of the wizard Zandaril, who is from the nomadic horse-herders of Zannib. His nation is renowned for its mind-wizards, but even he is in awe of what Penrys can do with her mind-magic. It goes far beyond telepathy to learning skills and language from those nearby and detecting people and even animals at incredible distances. It’s more than enough to make the Kigali army suspicious. The Kigali have no wizards, which explains why they turned to the allied nation of Zannib for magical assistance for their expeditionary force. They’re investigating rumors of an invasion in the Neshilik region.

Penrys soon makes herself useful, uncovering a plot to sabotage the camp, and thereby earns enough trust to be sent on a scouting mission with Zandaril to find out what they can about the Rasesni invaders’ wizards. They soon discover that the Rasesni are not so much invading as fleeing, and that what they’re fleeing has much to do with Penrys’s forgotten past.

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